Speaker 1: Still the Place with Laura Layton, Courtney thorn Smith and.
Speaker 2: Daphnews Amiga and iHeartRadio Podcast.
Speaker 3: Well, welcome back to Still the Place.
Speaker 4: Today we have our producer Chip has Hereday.
Speaker 3: I've been talking about.
Speaker 5: This is such a treat here in the room with
Speaker 5: the first of all you guys. You three looks spectacular.
Speaker 5: It makes it even more impossible to believe it's been
Speaker 5: thirty two years. I know, because you look great, and
Speaker 5: it's it's just so much fun to be in a
Speaker 5: room with you guys.
Speaker 6: I guess, isn't it.
Speaker 7: We've been having so much fun.
Speaker 1: That's the biggest surprise of this is how much fun
Speaker 1: we're having.
Speaker 5: I have been addicted to the to the podcast. You
Speaker 5: guys are knocking it out of the park, and I've
Speaker 5: been watching these episodes along with you, and I have
Speaker 5: not seen them since they first aired. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 5: like a I mean, what an eye opener?
Speaker 7: Is crazy? What you remember, you, caulse I find I
Speaker 7: remember that line.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I remember the set, remember you know the location, scout,
Speaker 5: But then I don't remember shooting that. I don't even
Speaker 5: remember ed aging. I don't remember anything about that. So
Speaker 5: there are these things that jump out at you that
Speaker 5: your mind is totally erased. And then O the little
Speaker 5: things that you remember about the day that we shot
Speaker 5: that or something.
Speaker 1: Do you remember one that you were like, oh, I
Speaker 1: can't believe that moment, like something that really struck you.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to think of the ones, you know, they
Speaker 5: came fast and furious. I remember the thing that I
Speaker 5: remember looking at and I'd totally forgotten about, was that
Speaker 5: we experimented with putting a sky above the I sat
Speaker 5: there and went, you know, that doesn't look too bad.
Speaker 5: Why didn't we keep that up? I don't know. Do
Speaker 5: we lose it? Did? I don't think so?
Speaker 6: Are we going to lose it because we've seen it?
Speaker 6: Like in three?
Speaker 5: I remember, I remember the rain, and I think it
Speaker 5: was the last time we did the rain because remember
Speaker 5: the director was really wanted the rain for that scene.
Speaker 5: You know, for that scene that makes sense you had
Speaker 5: to put in the cloudy skies above the you know,
Speaker 5: the set that was on stage and had nothing it's
Speaker 5: scaffolding up above them. Yeah, and I looked pretty good
Speaker 5: for the day when there was no such thing as
Speaker 5: blue screen and yeah, and effects that you can do
Speaker 5: like that now. For some reason, said, I don't remember
Speaker 5: seeing it again.
Speaker 2: Chip came, we ran into each other and he brought
Speaker 2: in so much stuff from his storage.
Speaker 6: He has so many memories and stories.
Speaker 2: And the cool thing about Chip is that he was
Speaker 2: with us on set every day, you know, for the listeners,
Speaker 2: like he was like Darren started the show, but he
Speaker 2: was with the writers. Warn Spelling executive produced. Obviously he
Speaker 2: was in LA with the writers, but we were way
Speaker 2: out in Santa Clarita and you were in the trenches.
Speaker 6: With us every day. On purpose. You put it out
Speaker 6: there on purpose.
Speaker 5: So I chose Santa Clorida Studios on purpose to get
Speaker 5: us out of lay from LA because it's tough enough
Speaker 5: as it is doing what we were doing without having
Speaker 5: the network popping in and going hi. You know, we
Speaker 5: were just down the block.
Speaker 1: So we just want to say, why do you say
Speaker 1: tough shooting what we were shooting.
Speaker 5: It's a new series, and anytime you go into a
Speaker 5: new series, you're going to have difficult days, you know,
Speaker 5: where you're feeling your way. People didn't know each other,
Speaker 5: you know. I mean how easy it was in season
Speaker 5: two compared to season one as far as going in
Speaker 5: there knowing the crew knowing the rest of the cast,
Speaker 5: being more comfortable and starting a series. And I'd done
Speaker 5: a number of them because most series go for six
Speaker 5: or thirteen and goodbye. And I knew that it was
Speaker 5: not going to be you know, milk and cookies and
Speaker 5: let's but by the way, let's have all of corporate
Speaker 5: and network come by and visit every day and watch you,
Speaker 5: you know, do what you do.
Speaker 1: Right, speaking of the beginning, So we were talking in
Speaker 1: the ratings, and I remember, and I'm sure you remember
Speaker 1: Andrew shoe Like being very paying attention to the knowing
Speaker 1: all the numbers, checking all the trades.
Speaker 5: He would come up to buy office every day and
Speaker 5: ask Lisa, where are they? Where are they they come?
Speaker 5: And I kept saying, Andrew, calm down, Wow, we love her,
Speaker 5: God's gift everything. She was amazing and so twitted out
Speaker 5: about radio. Say Andrew, calm down, we're cool.
Speaker 1: But when we were starting, one of the fans sent us,
Speaker 1: like the ratings, I thought we weren't that great, but
Speaker 1: we were ninety two of ninety five.
Speaker 5: Well, you don't listen, you don't. First of all, we
Speaker 5: never looked at the rankings. You looked at the.
Speaker 7: Number, number, how many okay.
Speaker 5: Fox. Fox was a brand new network and it only
Speaker 5: started about four or five years before that, and they
Speaker 5: didn't have nearly the affiliates the number of stations around
Speaker 5: the country showing the show as CBS, ABC and NBC,
Speaker 5: And so that was fallacious to look at that and say, oh,
Speaker 5: we're doing awful. Look at how low rank we are.
Speaker 5: You just looked at what Fox had done and you
Speaker 5: compared it to what Fox. The other shows on Fox
Speaker 5: was and they only had one hour that was successful,
Speaker 5: and it was not successful in its first year, and
Speaker 5: that was Beverly Hill's nine of two and zero and
Speaker 5: they had married with children was doing well, and the
Speaker 5: Tracy Almonds Show, which spun off into The Simpsons, and
Speaker 5: that was it at that point. But they were half
Speaker 5: hours our dramas nine O two and O is it
Speaker 5: And if you go back and look at nine O
Speaker 5: two and oh it was it had worse waitings, I
Speaker 5: think than we did. And it wasn't until they started
Speaker 5: airing them in the second season in July where they
Speaker 5: caught that audience, that summertime audience that they started to climb.
Speaker 5: So I had been on enough spelling shows where I
Speaker 5: was able to say Hey, it's gonna be okay. Just
Speaker 5: what you know, we'll fix any problems. We'll get him there.
Speaker 5: And Andrew, Andrew, no one, we're gonna get canceled first
Speaker 5: of all. And I'm trying to remember this. I was
Speaker 5: trying to remember this when I was listening to you
Speaker 5: guys on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. I
Speaker 5: think we were picked up for a full twenty two
Speaker 5: episodes from the get go.
Speaker 1: Well, we as a cast were picked up for thirteen r.
Speaker 1: We had a thirteen contract.
Speaker 5: But that was more because if a character or a
Speaker 5: performer wasn't working out, we could we could get rid
Speaker 5: of them at the end of thirteen.
Speaker 1: And so you knew, even though we weren't doing well
Speaker 1: at thirteen, you knew we were going to do twenty.
Speaker 5: Sarin will correct me if you talk up again, but
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure we were picked up for a full
Speaker 5: season because Aaron and the other thing. I remember talking
Speaker 5: to Aaron about it when the ratings were slipping, and
Speaker 5: I said, so you think we're going to go The
Speaker 5: worry was not that we were going to get canceled
Speaker 5: mid season one got picked up for a second season,
Speaker 5: and I remember asking Aaron I said, so you think
Speaker 5: we're gonna be okay, Aaron, and he said, ah, we're
Speaker 5: making some tweaks. We're making some tweaks, we're making some changes.
Speaker 5: It'll be fine, and we're going to find our Alexis.
Speaker 5: I said, okay, that's what he's doing. And I realized
Speaker 5: at that point, Aaron's gone through this before, He's done
Speaker 5: this before Dynasty, and the parallels with Dynasty with our show.
Speaker 5: I was just thinking on the way over here, the
Speaker 5: parallels with Dynasty is fascinating because Dynasty was made as
Speaker 5: an ABC pilot and the pilot sold. But the pilot,
Speaker 5: which was originally called Oil there's a great name, very
Speaker 5: good name.
Speaker 7: Change tried Vinegar but it just eld.
Speaker 5: The original pilot of Dynasty had George Prepard playing Blake
Speaker 5: Carrington and the Aaron said, I remember going on the
Speaker 5: set of the pilot. It was over at the Fox Studios,
Speaker 5: and because I knew a lot of the crew, and
Speaker 5: it was it was like one of those sets where
Speaker 5: you open the door and the tension hits you like
Speaker 5: a miasthma. It was like everybody's upset everything, you know.
Speaker 5: I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but
Speaker 5: George Prepard was a monster. It was just horrible and
Speaker 5: made Lynda Evans cry every day. And so when Aaron
Speaker 5: got a pick up, he says, I'll take the pickup,
Speaker 5: but we're recasting the lead. And they brought in John Forsyth,
Speaker 5: who was like one of the most lovely men I've
Speaker 5: ever worked with. He and Ricardo Monelbon are on my
Speaker 5: you know, the Furman is the greatest people I've worked
Speaker 5: with men. So so just like we had to. And
Speaker 5: when we recast Billy, it wasn't because he was he
Speaker 5: was a sweetheart. He just didn't embody the character the
Speaker 5: way that the writers had visioned him. And so we
Speaker 5: recast our lead. And then I knew that Aaron was
Speaker 5: sitting there making the tweaks with Darren. The two of
Speaker 5: them got together and said, this is what we want
Speaker 5: to do here, this is what we want to do,
Speaker 5: and then we have to cast a Joan Collins because
Speaker 5: that's what saved Dynasty. Dynasty was in the toilet for
Speaker 5: the first year, the beginning of the second season, and
Speaker 5: that's what it took off when he brought in, when
Speaker 5: he brought in the villainous and so Aaron had done
Speaker 5: this already knew, he knew what to do.
Speaker 4: And these conversations were happening as you'd already begun the show, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, we started the.
Speaker 5: Show premiered very well behind Beverly Hills because the crossover
Speaker 5: with nine O two one oh. But as it went on,
Speaker 5: you know, and looking back on it, I was expecting saying,
Speaker 5: oh God, Okay, we look in those first few episodes,
Speaker 5: I bet they're awful because we had to make changes.
Speaker 5: They weren't better all they were well written Darren. You know,
Speaker 5: Darren wrote a great pilot, created some great characters, but
Speaker 5: you didn't have anything that was hooking you, that was
Speaker 5: bringing you back. We yeah, these little angst written polemics
Speaker 5: of what twenty somethings are going through, and it didn't
Speaker 5: really suck people in. And one of the things I
Speaker 5: think that helped us a whole bunch and helped Darren too,
Speaker 5: because Darren, this was the first I think this was
Speaker 5: the first show Darren ran on his own as a showrunner.
Speaker 5: He had created nine of two one zero and written
Speaker 5: the pilot, but I think there were other head writers there.
Speaker 5: He can correct me on that. But what helped I
Speaker 5: think at the time was that Chuck Pratt was on
Speaker 5: staff as a co producer at the time and one
Speaker 5: of the main writers. From the get go. Chuck had
Speaker 5: already won Emmys for running Santa Barbara Days of all
Speaker 5: daytime soap barbers, and Chuck had that, you know, that
Speaker 5: daytime sensibility that he could pull the tropes out of
Speaker 5: the thin air. And like, the very first thing that
Speaker 5: I noticed it was a change before they even start
Speaker 5: serializing it, before they started doing Cliffhanchors, which is another
Speaker 5: daytime you know staple, was he brought in the wolf
Speaker 5: in sheep's clothing character, which is another standards daytime self character.
Speaker 5: The guy you think is, oh, he's so nice and
Speaker 5: he's going to be so wonderful. It was Billy Moses.
Speaker 5: He's going to be so wonderful for Alison, and it's
Speaker 5: interesting he's married and he's cheap, and then he gets
Speaker 5: darker and darker, and it's you know, we had a
Speaker 5: lot of those characters show up on the show, and yeah,
Speaker 5: really it really worked, and uh, oh god, I've got
Speaker 5: a great Chuck brought story for you. This this is
Speaker 5: emblematic of you know, and I went to high school
Speaker 5: with Chuck, so he was he had a warped imagination
Speaker 5: from from high school.
Speaker 6: Did wrote my first first feature. I remember Para the
Speaker 6: horror film, and.
Speaker 5: Chuck and I worked with them later. I ended up
Speaker 5: going and writing All My Children for a few years,
Speaker 5: and he ended up being the head writer on it
Speaker 5: and being in the room with him. He comes up
Speaker 5: out of left field, comes up with ideas. And this
Speaker 5: one time was the big beginning of the second season.
Speaker 5: We were in Aaron's office because we went and we
Speaker 5: screened every rough cut with Aaron, and Aaron would give
Speaker 5: us the notes and I may have to reshoot something
Speaker 5: or And we were sitting there and we had already
Speaker 5: shot the accident that Michael had with Kimberly that killed Kimberly. Right.
Speaker 5: He the whole story was that he had he had
Speaker 5: divorced Jane, and he was with Kimberly and.
Speaker 7: Hapened in season one beginning.
Speaker 5: Of season two, but they were planning it in season A.
Speaker 7: Lot more happened in season one than I remember, right.
Speaker 5: And he had had an affair with Sydney and cheated
Speaker 5: on Kimberly with Sydney and Kimberly, was I right? And
Speaker 5: then he crawled back to Kimberly with a wedding ring
Speaker 5: and he was drunk and driving and he said marry me,
Speaker 5: and she says yes, and it's great, and he's he's
Speaker 5: plastered and he drives off a cliff and we shot
Speaker 5: this this stunt where the car comes rolling down the cliff,
Speaker 5: and unfortunately it was a lot more violent than we
Speaker 5: had had planned. It landed on it its roof and
Speaker 5: crushed the roof, and we were out there going, well, nobody's.
Speaker 2: Living, so get rid of that guy.
Speaker 5: The plan was to kill off, you know, Kimberly, and
Speaker 5: then drive Michael's whole storyline through the rest of that
Speaker 5: season and dealing with that out aftermath. And we were
Speaker 5: sitting there screening an episode or two before that with
Speaker 5: Aaron and Marsha Cross had some scene that she just
Speaker 5: as she usually did, just knocked it out of the park,
Speaker 5: and we were all sitting there going, oh, man, she
Speaker 5: is so good. I'm so sorry we're having a loser.
Speaker 5: I mean, we all knew that was the plan. And
Speaker 5: then and Chuck got this evil grin on his face
Speaker 5: and he said, you know, we should wait till the
Speaker 5: end of the season and bring her back from the dead,
Speaker 5: and right, that's the daytime soap mentality he brought to it,
Speaker 5: and everybody in the room went yes. And Marsha played
Speaker 5: along beautifully because she said I'm off the show and
Speaker 5: and and even when she came back for that, she said,
Speaker 5: don't put me in the credits on this show. And
Speaker 5: it led to that great shot that Charlie Carrell did
Speaker 5: at the Beach House where you and Michael Sydney and
Speaker 5: Michael are romping in the bedroom and the camera pulls
Speaker 5: back and the waves are crashing in it's night and
Speaker 5: suddenly there's this figure that standing and watching them in
Speaker 5: the camera then arcs around and there's Kimberly and it
Speaker 5: was black. When nothing aired, my home phone rang.
Speaker 6: That was the end of two No.
Speaker 5: That wasn't the end of two No. That was that
Speaker 5: was like two or three episodes before the end of.
Speaker 6: Seasons okay, because then.
Speaker 5: We had the great shot that Nancy Malone shot of
Speaker 5: of Kimberly going into the into the bathroom to get
Speaker 5: a paint pill and she pulls the wigs the famous
Speaker 5: we were screening that. We sat down and Aaron looked
Speaker 5: at me and said, I sure hope this works. It
Speaker 5: was It was just child that was I mean, it
Speaker 5: was a writer's room, so I mean they would sit there.
Speaker 5: I'm sure Darren had.
Speaker 2: Some Did he just jump on board the whole soap
Speaker 2: mentality when he had to let go of the whole realistic.
Speaker 5: I think he, I mean, he could really got into
Speaker 5: another Here's a Darren story for you. They came. They
Speaker 5: came in season three, and I know you want to
Speaker 5: talk about double ups and you just go, this is
Speaker 5: a great Darren story about midway through season three, they
Speaker 5: were planning out what was going to end season three,
Speaker 5: and man, we've got Kimberly talking to some guy in
Speaker 5: the back stat of the car going some imaginary friend, right, psycho,
Speaker 5: And Darren calls me up and there had been a
Speaker 5: in real life, there had been a assessment plane somebody
Speaker 5: had taken and landed on the White House lawn and
Speaker 5: you know, it was a major security breach of Clinton's
Speaker 5: White House and it was in the news. And about
Speaker 5: two days later, Darren calls me and he says, sure, Okay,
Speaker 5: we're talking about the end of the season and I
Speaker 5: want I want Kimberly to to steal an airplane and
Speaker 5: fly it into Melrose Place. Just come yea, So it
Speaker 5: wasn't It was like, oh, okay, I that's interesting. I
Speaker 5: always learned as as a line producer, never tell the
Speaker 5: head writer or the show writer, no, you can't do it,
Speaker 5: we can't afford it. Goodbye. So I told it. I
Speaker 5: told her. I said, okay, well, well let me let
Speaker 5: me look at it, let me touge it out. Let
Speaker 5: me see what it costs to fly an airplane into
Speaker 5: a building because there was no scene.
Speaker 6: God.
Speaker 5: So I got called him back after I'd run the numbers,
Speaker 5: and I said, well, we can't exactly afford an airplane,
Speaker 5: but we can blow the thing up. We can blow
Speaker 5: the building up.
Speaker 7: So was it picking up?
Speaker 1: Because we're watching the beginning starting to get busy. We
Speaker 1: just had the Billy Moses storyline. It's starting to get
Speaker 1: more and more exciting. And we did thirty three episodes
Speaker 1: the first season.
Speaker 5: We did thirty two and a half a half.
Speaker 1: It was right, So we did an entire twelve months.
Speaker 1: I remember you might remember this. So we were at
Speaker 1: Lake Hastaic because we couldn't afford real skiing, so we
Speaker 1: were water skiing in January, some freezingle thing at Lakestaic
Speaker 1: with me and Heather and Andrew.
Speaker 7: We did some and we got picked up again.
Speaker 1: And Lona, our makeup artis and I could not stop
Speaker 1: crying because we were like, we got picked up. We
Speaker 1: just both started crying up and then we were so
Speaker 1: tired and you're like it's good news.
Speaker 7: You're like, okay, it was a year.
Speaker 5: Solid started in May and we ended in March. I
Speaker 5: mean we had eleven months. Yeah, it was less.
Speaker 1: So was it because we were gaining steam and we
Speaker 1: didn't want to lose That is that why they kept
Speaker 1: making up for episodes.
Speaker 5: That Fox Fox started trying to rerun it, and the
Speaker 5: reruns tanked. So we were climbing in the ratings steadily
Speaker 5: through the end of season one, and then you know,
Speaker 5: as they want to do, they want to push stuff
Speaker 5: to February and May sweep, November, February, May sweeps, and
Speaker 5: so they tried re running some episodes from earlier in
Speaker 5: the season, and it just nobody wanted to watch because
Speaker 5: they had already gotten hooked on that week to week
Speaker 5: what's coming next? And when they tuned in and said,
Speaker 5: this isn't a pick up from last weekend, you know,
Speaker 5: where's where's uh? Alison and Keith they didn't want to
Speaker 5: get interrupted, they didn't want their flow to be in.
Speaker 5: It's why Daytime doesn't rerun.
Speaker 2: Well because Brainchild was the double ups? And had you
Speaker 2: done double ups on other shows? Was that spelling thing?
Speaker 5: Who you're looking at him?
Speaker 2: I liked you for all of us. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: I didn't know that when.
Speaker 5: We got to pick up, Uh, Aaron called me with
Speaker 5: Darren in this in the room and I think Peter
Speaker 5: Chernan made been who was head of Fox, and he's
Speaker 5: good news, we're getting picked up. But Fox leantus you
Speaker 5: know how many episodes original episodes weekend air without a
Speaker 5: break and they and I said, I said, well, how
Speaker 5: many do you want? He said, just just work it out,
Speaker 5: work out a calendar for me, and we're looking to
Speaker 5: do as many as we did the first season, which
Speaker 5: we did thirty two. And I said, you got a Boston.
Speaker 5: I hung up the phone and I went, how the
Speaker 5: hell are we going to do this? We're already in
Speaker 5: you know, January or February chick up and we'd have
Speaker 5: to start never go on to hey this and even
Speaker 5: then we weren't going to be able to make the
Speaker 5: air days. And I started, you know, I remember a
Speaker 5: big long memo to them with all the possibilities including, well,
Speaker 5: maybe we can get a waiver from the guilds and
Speaker 5: work six days a week. And you were allowed to
Speaker 5: do that if you're on location, you can shoot six
Speaker 5: days a week. So I said, I said, well maybe
Speaker 5: we you know, cut out. At that point, we were
Speaker 5: doing seven day shoots, two days on location, five days
Speaker 5: on stage as well. Maybe we do six day shows
Speaker 5: to try to cram extra pages.
Speaker 7: In the thing about six issues.
Speaker 1: I just want to say, so there's twelve hours between
Speaker 1: you leave and when you come back. So it'd start
Speaker 1: on Monday at six am, and it worked at eight pm.
Speaker 1: Then we'd start at eight am, worked till ten pm.
Speaker 1: By the time you were on Friday night, you started
Speaker 1: two in the afternoon and worked till four am Saturday.
Speaker 1: If you only had one day off, that's our turnaround.
Speaker 1: But the crew's working that whole time.
Speaker 5: But the cruise turn around is at that point was
Speaker 5: like eight hours. It was.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous if you do a six day week, so
Speaker 1: you can do it on location for a few months
Speaker 1: or but if you're doing that all year, you don't
Speaker 1: have any day to recover because you go home and
Speaker 1: have to learn the lines. Yeah, so thank god, I
Speaker 1: just want to thank you right now for not doing
Speaker 1: that well.
Speaker 5: I had to lay out the options for them, but
Speaker 5: as I saw it from a budgeting standpoint, and then
Speaker 5: I started thinking, well, you know what if we if
Speaker 5: we start just getting a whole new crew in here.
Speaker 5: And I experimented by by taking just a couple of
Speaker 5: random episodes. And when you when you break down an
Speaker 5: episode from a script, you put them on strips, you know,
Speaker 5: called boarding the show, and the strips go into a
Speaker 5: big board and they're all the strip has that scene
Speaker 5: where it is who the actors are and all assa.
Speaker 5: And I took the strips from an old two old
Speaker 5: episodes and started messing around with building two boards out
Speaker 5: of it, and it worked.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: We had enough actors, We had enough storylines. Just actively,
Speaker 5: we had enough storylines. We were telling two and sometimes
Speaker 5: three storylines in an episode, and we had two stages
Speaker 5: at the time. We would later get to three and
Speaker 5: two days of location, and so we had enough locations
Speaker 5: and thespians to arrange two cruise shooting at the same time.
Speaker 5: And when that hit, I said, okay, this because I
Speaker 5: was paid by the episode. You were paid by the episode.
Speaker 5: The writers are paid by the episode, so everybody would
Speaker 5: be on board with more episodes. It's like hello, college fun.
Speaker 5: So I started laying that out for Aaron and Darren,
Speaker 5: the and the network. I did not know if it
Speaker 5: was going to work or not. But by the time
Speaker 5: we finished and I had kind of perfected how how
Speaker 5: you slipped by one day, and so anything you couldn't
Speaker 5: get done, it always fell into another another days, double up,
Speaker 5: another episode, double up that if we did that three
Speaker 5: times a year, we could shoot six episodes in the
Speaker 5: space of three each time, and that would allow us
Speaker 5: to take hiatuses, Christmas off, all those good things, plus
Speaker 5: a three month hiatus at the end of the season.
Speaker 6: Did we do that twice a year or three times
Speaker 6: a year?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 5: It was a win win win win win in many
Speaker 5: ways because not only did we get extra paychecks, but
Speaker 5: we hired an entire crew, a Hollywood crew for three
Speaker 5: months out of the year. So we were giving employment
Speaker 5: to people three months out of the year that normally
Speaker 5: wouldn't have it. The keys were happy, The heads of
Speaker 5: the departments were happy, because I mean a deal with
Speaker 5: them for one hundred and fifty percent of their normal
Speaker 5: salary during double ups, they because they got an entire crew,
Speaker 5: like Wardrobe had two crews. So Denise, you know, we're
Speaker 5: still we're working a few more hours, but they were
Speaker 5: making one hundred and fifty percent of their normal paycheck.
Speaker 5: They were happy. And the biggest thing about double ups
Speaker 5: that was kind of like I didn't realize until after
Speaker 5: we started doing them, was that they saved a lot
Speaker 5: of money because you were still paying rentals on the
Speaker 5: stages for the same amount of time. You were still
Speaker 5: paying office rentals for this. All the facilities and phones
Speaker 5: and everything else was the same span of time, so
Speaker 5: I could split out that between all the episodes. So
Speaker 5: suddenly I'm banking some money. I'm looking good. And that
Speaker 5: because the network did not give us money for the
Speaker 5: explosions and the car chases and the boats blowing up
Speaker 5: and all that stuff. But we had to work on
Speaker 5: what was a pretty modest budget. I mean it was
Speaker 5: a modest budget on Melrose Place. Yeah, certainly not. You know,
Speaker 5: X files came along the next day and I'm going,
Speaker 5: how much are they making? And so was I would
Speaker 5: have a little piggy bank of the account and would
Speaker 5: keep track of all the money I was saving. And
Speaker 5: when Darren calls me up and says I want to
Speaker 5: fly an airplane into the building and blow it up,
Speaker 5: I'm not going yeah right, yeah, I said we can
Speaker 5: blow it up though, And that's because that money came
Speaker 5: from my little slush fund from double ups. Wow, the
Speaker 5: network got their episodes. We all got extra paychecks and
Speaker 5: made extra you know, dollars, and you guys had to work.
Speaker 5: I tried to. I really tried to keep from bouncing
Speaker 5: you from one episode to the other in the same day.
Speaker 5: You told me you remember one day where.
Speaker 6: You had to different places.
Speaker 5: I tried to keep, you know, so going where am
Speaker 5: I you?
Speaker 3: You modeled how to do it?
Speaker 6: And so other shows I'm sure.
Speaker 5: I'm sure there have been other shows that have had two.
Speaker 5: I mean lots of shows have second units running all
Speaker 5: the time where they have another unit that's shooting stuff
Speaker 5: and other stuff and they'll bring actors over. So I didn't,
Speaker 5: but I think I was. I want to know. It
Speaker 5: was the first one. It's spelling to do entire episodes
Speaker 5: with a full crew, you know, and four directors, two prepping,
Speaker 5: two shooting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thirty two episodes. Was so exceptional that you figured
Speaker 3: out how to.
Speaker 5: Make it thirty four hours thirty two that we did
Speaker 5: two two hours, remember every year, So we did thirty
Speaker 5: four hours.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the first time? And I remember we
Speaker 1: were like, it's not going to be like we're just
Speaker 1: trying it. We're just trying it.
Speaker 7: I remember, very.
Speaker 1: Convinced that it wasn't going to work, and we go
Speaker 1: back to Norman. I was like, one thing, I know,
Speaker 1: we're not doing this again. Cut to what would really
Speaker 1: help me.
Speaker 5: I always rolled around and this was key, And none
Speaker 5: of this could have happened if it wasn't for Darren
Speaker 5: and the staff, if I didn't have six scripts to
Speaker 5: board all at once. Yes, yeah, it was a useless exercise.
Speaker 5: And so I had this, you know, I said Darren,
Speaker 5: it can you do this? You know? And he said,
Speaker 5: I'll get them to your chip, don't worry. And I had.
Speaker 5: I never had a problem where I said I don't
Speaker 5: have the script, I can't board the shows. They had
Speaker 5: to work as fast as we did to get those scripts.
Speaker 1: Out and I was and they couldn't have somebody heavy
Speaker 1: in two episode Side decides to be doing one and two,
Speaker 1: three and four, five and second they were good about.
Speaker 1: I remember they were very good about you be heavy.
Speaker 7: On one on one?
Speaker 1: Was it teammate and team B? Heavy on Blue team
Speaker 1: and not heavy on Red Team because you'd have six episodes,
Speaker 1: and in those episodes that.
Speaker 7: Was a long time on Melow's Place.
Speaker 1: Anything happened episodes, So you're trying to remember with Mary,
Speaker 1: was it Dolan's married donn or a script adviser sitting with.
Speaker 7: Her going where am I?
Speaker 5: Like? Where?
Speaker 7: What has happened? Where am I?
Speaker 1: Because you're trying to keep it so much.
Speaker 5: To try this.
Speaker 7: Well, then we found because some of it was so arch.
Speaker 1: Just play the scene, like pretend to the standalone scene
Speaker 1: because sometimes you get so confused. I'm just committing to
Speaker 1: what I see on the page today. I don't have
Speaker 1: any idea.
Speaker 2: I don't know I came before, just committing to just
Speaker 2: commit to the word and the intensity.
Speaker 5: You know, I remember the first year was you can't
Speaker 5: change any lines. Towards the end of that, you know,
Speaker 5: the writers, you know, trusted me enough to know whether
Speaker 5: it was something I had to call them about and say,
Speaker 5: because if you if you did change things, it seemed innocuous.
Speaker 5: You didn't realize what they had planned way down the
Speaker 5: line back. It is important. You know. There were once
Speaker 5: or twice they said why did you let them cut
Speaker 5: that chip? And I went, oh, shoot.
Speaker 4: And do you think that that planning that far in
Speaker 4: advance developed because of necessity with the doubleops?
Speaker 5: Or do you think that was good writing team that
Speaker 5: that that didn't that knew where they were going? And
Speaker 5: and Darren and then uh, Chuck and then later Frank
Speaker 5: South came on board, and then I think in the
Speaker 5: second season h who else came on? Frank, Chuck, Carol Mendelsohn, Carroll,
Speaker 5: and Carroll was just such a good writer. I mean
Speaker 5: she ended up running on and she had a great
Speaker 5: mind for for story and stuff. So we had a
Speaker 5: really good staff of writings and they were if they
Speaker 5: hadn't worked, none of this would have worked.
Speaker 1: And then I saw in our little cheat sheet that
Speaker 1: you started writing in these season three?
Speaker 7: Were you writing?
Speaker 5: I've been writing fantasy islands and stuff on any show
Speaker 5: that I was on. I've been writing off and on.
Speaker 5: I ended up going and writing full time on All
Speaker 5: my Children for almost ten years.
Speaker 2: Wow, did you see Melrose stories for all my children?
Speaker 5: The head writer, the head writer?
Speaker 7: Did we know you were writing, because I don't remember that.
Speaker 5: Did we know you directed a few two?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I do remember that.
Speaker 5: I found something I'll share with you as soon as
Speaker 5: I look at it. I found six days of dailies
Speaker 5: from season four show I directed. Wow, it's fun very
Speaker 5: daily too.
Speaker 3: That's just so fun and funny because like, that's.
Speaker 5: All this work, all the days, stuff that didn't make
Speaker 5: it to the cut and all the my I had
Speaker 5: a show that where Kristin Davis was haunting she had died,
Speaker 5: and she rose out of the pool and everyone like
Speaker 5: the ghost of Christmas path. My god, my god.
Speaker 8: Hi, I'm Kristin Davis, and I want to know, are
Speaker 8: you a Charlotte. In nineteen ninety seven, my life was
Speaker 8: forever changed when I took on the role of Charlotte
Speaker 8: Yorke on a new HBO show called Sex and the City.
Speaker 8: As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte navigate relationships
Speaker 8: in New York City, the show helped push once unacceptable
Speaker 8: conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative
Speaker 8: around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them
Speaker 8: as they searched for fulfillment in life. Sex and friendships.
Speaker 8: Now I want to connect with you and share untold
Speaker 8: stories and all the behind the scenes together.
Speaker 7: With special guests.
Speaker 8: What will begin with sex and the City will evolve
Speaker 8: into talks about themes that are still so relevant today.
Speaker 8: Are You a Charlotte is a much more than just
Speaker 8: rewatching our beloved show. It brings the past and the
Speaker 8: present together as we talk with heart, humor, and of
Speaker 8: course some optimism. Listen to Are You a Charlotte on
Speaker 8: the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 5: The one. The other thing that really helped was by
Speaker 5: that time I had a stable of directors that I
Speaker 5: really liked, and I mean I looked at the I've
Speaker 5: looked in the first season as some of these directors
Speaker 5: and I go, I don't remember that person. And there
Speaker 5: was the one that you mentioned that I remember very
Speaker 5: well because you didn't come to me and complain about
Speaker 5: the one that said you cry on this. Yeah, but
Speaker 5: it got back to me and he didn't come back.
Speaker 5: He made court upset. Well.
Speaker 3: He has since become a very successful editor.
Speaker 5: So we went through a whole bunch of different directors
Speaker 5: until Ife and I Charlie Crawl I'd known since I
Speaker 5: was a child, Charlie, and I brought Charlie and as
Speaker 5: soon as he was available, and then at the beginning
Speaker 5: of each season, I just said, here, Charlie, pencil your
Speaker 5: name and you do like every third one.
Speaker 1: He did every other ones, every other and Richard Lang member.
Speaker 1: Richard get us out. I remember one time I was like, oh, darn,
Speaker 1: I didn't get out in time for lunch. He goes,
Speaker 1: hold on, We're going to Grace and just did a
Speaker 1: shot to get me out at lunch.
Speaker 7: I was like, oh I didn't. Oh wow, thank you.
Speaker 5: Yeah. My brother produced the Dantanna Vegas Show for Aaron
Speaker 5: and I filled in as a social producer a couple
Speaker 5: of times. And Richard had directed that pilot and did
Speaker 5: a bunch of man he was I loved him so much,
Speaker 5: he was, yeah, amazing and Chip Chalmers, who was our indeed, yeah,
Speaker 5: he ended up directing a bunch of them. You keep
Speaker 5: it in house. You got to have fun because you're
Speaker 5: working so hard, and if you don't have enjoyable people
Speaker 5: to be around, enjoyable directors, enjoyable you know, crew. Because
Speaker 5: we really really lucked out with the cast.
Speaker 7: We lucked out.
Speaker 5: You all know now after you know, all the time
Speaker 5: in the business. Yeah, and I had just come I
Speaker 5: I was telling that I had just come before this
Speaker 5: from a very short lived series in Las Vegas for
Speaker 5: Aaron with a couple of actors that just were very
Speaker 5: grumpy and unhappy, Thestians, and you know, I had a
Speaker 5: chair thrown at me and just I mean, it was
Speaker 5: not a pleasant time.
Speaker 6: It wasn't a pumpkin pie.
Speaker 5: I remember so well. I remember very well the very
Speaker 5: first photo shoot before we started shooting the eight of you.
Speaker 5: It was down in Culver City, I think, at an
Speaker 5: MGM stage, and that was the first time I met
Speaker 5: all of you. And I went down there specifically go hmm,
Speaker 5: I wonder who's going to.
Speaker 7: Get everybody out?
Speaker 5: I thought, I said, well, Thomas is a little brash,
Speaker 5: but he ended up being the biggest pussy cat of all,
Speaker 5: you know, And so all we were so blessed with
Speaker 5: the cast that and then when we brought people at Heather,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean I'd worked with Heather on t J.
Speaker 5: Hooker and she had done a TV movie with my
Speaker 5: wife Deborah just before we started. And Susanne Summer is
Speaker 5: called Rich Men's Single Women with Susanne, my wife, Debora
Speaker 5: Deren and Heather and it was about it was a
Speaker 5: light comedy. Actually it was about three women looking for
Speaker 5: rich men. And so Heather I knew was going to
Speaker 5: be adult.
Speaker 2: At what point and how did it come about that
Speaker 2: Heather was the Alexis.
Speaker 6: Heather was going to be.
Speaker 5: Aaron had told me that we're looking for our Alexis.
Speaker 5: Now he obviously had sat down with Darren and Darren
Speaker 5: created the character of Amanda.
Speaker 2: But when during season because she came on in episode late.
Speaker 5: Yeah, twenty one. Yeah, and the writers had already started
Speaker 5: fine tuning things. I mean they started adding you know, cliffhangers. Yeah,
Speaker 5: which was the big thing that brought people back. They
Speaker 5: started adding those. Alison and Billy was such a one
Speaker 5: of the things that tested very well because the network
Speaker 5: is always on a new series, especially testing what's working,
Speaker 5: what's not working, And Alison Billy was the shoe star.
Speaker 5: That was it. So if you, I don't know if
Speaker 5: you noticed, but you started working a lot more. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you a question. How horrified dream
Speaker 1: you found out Andrew and I were dating.
Speaker 5: Oh, I knew right away. I had a secret weapon there,
Speaker 5: and that was Lisa Bell, my assistant. Anything that was
Speaker 5: ever said in the in the makeup trailer or the wardrobe,
Speaker 5: Lisa somehow found out about it. I don't know if
Speaker 5: she had it bugged, but she was. You had the
Speaker 5: makeup tiler, Andrew and Court here and it was the
Speaker 5: funniest thing was was that after season one was over,
Speaker 5: before we started shooting again, I took you, and Andrew
Speaker 5: and my then wife Deborah, and I took you out
Speaker 5: to Trader Vix.
Speaker 7: Oh my gosh, that's right.
Speaker 5: And you guys didn't tell me that you had broken up.
Speaker 7: Broken up already.
Speaker 5: You had broken up already about a week in the
Speaker 5: office for the first time. And Lisa says, you know,
Speaker 5: I handed the Trader Vix bill. Let's say you're putting
Speaker 5: in for this, And she said, you know, they broke up.
Speaker 5: They didn't tell me.
Speaker 1: It was a very friendly breakup, although we had Andrew
Speaker 1: on the trace, it was very friendly breakup.
Speaker 7: And he goes, that's not how I remember. It was like,
Speaker 7: I'm gonna.
Speaker 1: Say, we went to dinner with Chip and ever, so
Speaker 1: clearly it was friendly, you know, it.
Speaker 7: Was on a good front, seemed happy, But no, I thought.
Speaker 5: It was great listen, there's bound to be on set romances,
Speaker 5: you know, And they happened, and the good thing was
Speaker 5: was that it was nobody ever used them as a
Speaker 5: cudgel for any reason. You know.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, but it's that moment of fear this could
Speaker 1: go wrong.
Speaker 5: Well yeah, you know. Most of the time it's it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 5: you're right. Actually, if they do break up and suddenly
Speaker 5: they've got all these love scenes to do, it's more difficult.
Speaker 5: But that's more, that's more your problem.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's what you get paid for.
Speaker 7: It all worked out. Everybody's worked.
Speaker 8: PI. I'm Kristin Davis, and I want to know, are
Speaker 8: you Charlotte. In nineteen ninety seven, my life was forever
Speaker 8: changed when I took on the role of Charlotte Yorke
Speaker 8: on a new HBO show called Sex and the City.
Speaker 8: As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte navigate relationships
Speaker 8: in New York City, the show helped push once unacceptable
Speaker 8: conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative
Speaker 8: around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them
Speaker 8: as they searched for fulfillment in life. Sex and friendships
Speaker 8: now I want to connect with you and share untold
Speaker 8: stories and all the behind the scenes together with special guests.
Speaker 8: What will begin with sex and the City will evolve
Speaker 8: into talks about themes that are still so relevant today.
Speaker 8: Are You a Charlotte is a much more than just
Speaker 8: rewatching our beloved show. It brings the past and the
Speaker 8: present together as we talk with heart, humor, and of
Speaker 8: course some optimism. Listen to Are You a Charlotte on
Speaker 8: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: At what point did you guys know, number wise, you
Speaker 2: and Aaron and Darren know that it was really picking
Speaker 2: up and doing great.
Speaker 5: Just about well, you know, it didn't. It didn't go
Speaker 5: through the roof until season three, until they moved us
Speaker 5: from Wednesdays to Mondays and they had that great advertising
Speaker 5: campaign with a close up of Heather's face and Monday's
Speaker 5: are a Bitch? Yeah, that was great, and that was
Speaker 5: the season that suddenly everybody was watching it. So it
Speaker 5: was yeah, it was not so much it really jumped.
Speaker 5: It just started climbing back again slowly, and it climbed
Speaker 5: enough to where we got to pick up for the
Speaker 5: second season.
Speaker 6: And by that, why did they do Monday. Why who
Speaker 6: that was?
Speaker 5: That was Fox programming? They they I think they had uh,
Speaker 5: I think they moved when. I don't know when X
Speaker 5: Files X Files premier. I think in ninety three ninety four.
Speaker 5: First of all, I was not that worried about getting
Speaker 5: canceled two or much because they did not have a
Speaker 5: big development slate. Fox was a you know, I kind
Speaker 5: of kept tabs on what shows they were developing. They
Speaker 5: had to, you know, if they canceled us, they were
Speaker 5: gonna have to slide something in there. And I remember
Speaker 5: hearing that their development wasn't looking too good. They had
Speaker 5: this big, expensive show called The X Files, but that
Speaker 5: as long as we showed some improvement, not just in
Speaker 5: ratings but in everybody's opinion of the show. It's not
Speaker 5: like the network said, oh god, these first episodes are awful.
Speaker 5: They were good shows. They just wanted to find a
Speaker 5: way to tease the audience to tune in more and
Speaker 5: to come back. You know, they knew they could get them.
Speaker 5: If they could get them, they needed a way to
Speaker 5: bring the people back, and it was those serializing the
Speaker 5: show just was obviously the secret. And once we started
Speaker 5: doing that, once that that Billy Allison relationship was threatened
Speaker 5: by Keith and whoever you know Billy was dating and
Speaker 5: and you kept And then they brought in the other
Speaker 5: soap opera tropes like you know, fibroid tumors and is
Speaker 5: she going to die? And the wife that did and
Speaker 5: and then I mean it really started clicking the And
Speaker 5: it wasn't so much the ratings as the network was
Speaker 5: enjoying the shows. The little story of Jake and his son. Yeah,
Speaker 5: after the second episode you were on, I watched it
Speaker 5: and I said, you know, this is so sappy, but
Speaker 5: it is so sweet. Played it so honestly. And the
Speaker 5: thing was that was not so much a storyline for
Speaker 5: Grant as it was a storyline for the two of you,
Speaker 5: and it was there to service your relationship. And the
Speaker 5: writers did such a good Darren. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: there's a reason why he went on to become Sex
Speaker 5: and the City and all that. He didn't have all
Speaker 5: the experience in the world of running shows, but god,
Speaker 5: he had some raw talent at that time that was
Speaker 5: just so obvious for story character. He developed these characters
Speaker 5: that were so good and having a solid writing staff
Speaker 5: underneath him, especially Chuck who had done all this many
Speaker 5: many times on daytime. It was just a wonderful blend
Speaker 5: of talent writers, talented actors.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, that's what we've really discovered from watching
Speaker 2: the first fifteen is that it really was well written,
Speaker 2: It was touching, it was ahead of its time. It
Speaker 2: took on issues that other shows weren't taken on. It
Speaker 2: wasn't it was escape, but relevant, escape in a way.
Speaker 2: And I didn't think of the show as that back then,
Speaker 2: but watching it now, you're right.
Speaker 5: And Aaron was always very proud of tackling the issues issues,
Speaker 5: and you guys were talking and I love Doug's you know,
Speaker 5: I've read all the publicity he's had since on Hollywood
Speaker 5: Deadline and stuff like that. It really was not Aaron
Speaker 5: or Darren or even the network that put a kebash on,
Speaker 5: you know, let's have a gay kiss or let's push
Speaker 5: the envelope on that, you know, it was it was
Speaker 5: just reality. It was the advertiser and they would take
Speaker 5: it right up to the point where the advertisers went, whoa.
Speaker 5: And without advertisers, you didn't have a show. So you
Speaker 5: had you had to, you know, walk up to that
Speaker 5: line and push as hard as you can and Aaron
Speaker 5: always did that. I mean, Dynasty had a gay character
Speaker 5: ten years earlier. Yes, you know, the son came out
Speaker 5: as gay, and of course it couldn't talk about it
Speaker 5: as honestly as we did in Melo's place. But you
Speaker 5: saw the progression, he said, And then look at thirty
Speaker 5: years later, here we are, and it's because of show
Speaker 5: And I'd worked on a show at Showtime in the
Speaker 5: eighties called Brothers, which was all about three brothers and
Speaker 5: the youngest one came out as gay and he had
Speaker 5: a best friend who was a very flamboyant gay played
Speaker 5: by Philip Charles mackenzie who was absolutely hilarious. And it
Speaker 5: was a funny, funny show. And yet but it was
Speaker 5: on Showtime, so it was it was not at the
Speaker 5: whim of advertise mission. So we were able to do
Speaker 5: the show about AIDS when an AIDS first hit and
Speaker 5: be honest about it and you know, make a teaching
Speaker 5: moment out of it. And Aaron tried, and the network tried,
Speaker 5: and we went as far as we could go in
Speaker 5: that day and age, and it was it was. He
Speaker 5: did that on a lot of a lot of his
Speaker 5: shows where he had.
Speaker 6: A synergy with Darren and Ain.
Speaker 2: Yes, just those stories, not just the gay story, but
Speaker 2: the stories and the.
Speaker 5: Relevant stories came out of the writer's room. Aaron was
Speaker 5: not in the writer's room. Aaron was running zillion other shows,
Speaker 5: an entire and building a really big house. But no Darren.
Speaker 5: Would you know. They would pitch the stories to Erin
Speaker 5: before they pitched them to the network, and Aaron would
Speaker 5: give his no, I think you should do this or
Speaker 5: do that, and I can guarantee you Aaron was the
Speaker 5: one that said, we need to bring in a villain,
Speaker 5: we need an Electis Carrington in here, because he'd done
Speaker 5: that before.
Speaker 1: Did he know early on that it was going to
Speaker 1: be Heather? Like was he waiting for Heather to be available?
Speaker 5: I don't know. He did not tell me. He just said,
Speaker 5: we're going to find our Alexis is what I remember
Speaker 5: was the hole.
Speaker 7: At one point she was doing two of his shows at.
Speaker 1: Once, like, yeah, and she was such a she was.
Speaker 7: Certainly our lucky Penny.
Speaker 5: Yeah she was. She was. She took put the retro
Speaker 5: rockets on the back of it and took off. But
Speaker 5: things were progressing, the ratings were creeping up even before
Speaker 5: she came out. She just kind of took it to
Speaker 5: that next level and then all the stuff that came
Speaker 5: out of that, you know, the writers just ate it
Speaker 5: up and just went with it, and so it was
Speaker 5: such a you all know, I mean, these things, you
Speaker 5: don't know what's going to work and what's not going
Speaker 5: to work. But if you don't start with a really
Speaker 5: good talent in the writing staff and a great talent
Speaker 5: on screen, you don't have much.
Speaker 2: And the c of a producer to know how to
Speaker 2: do double ups and make the money and from what
Speaker 2: all the talent he has.
Speaker 5: I thank you very much.
Speaker 6: But oh it's like takes all these different.
Speaker 5: My job was to make sure it got done on time,
Speaker 5: on budget, and everybody it was great.
Speaker 4: Do you remember any other storylines or any other things
Speaker 4: that you guys wanted to do that maybe got pushed
Speaker 4: back either side of the network or advertisers or just
Speaker 4: wouldn't fly, Like things that you or the writers wanted
Speaker 4: to do but couldn't quite You.
Speaker 5: Know, that's going to be a question for Darren. Yeah,
Speaker 5: because the or Chuck Pratt or wherever you can get
Speaker 5: talk to, because is by the time I got scripts
Speaker 5: or I got told what the stories were, they had
Speaker 5: already been approved by the network, and they were in
Speaker 5: the works because it was God, we were doing so
Speaker 5: many that it was just give me a script. Okay, okay,
Speaker 5: let's put it on. Give me that script. Gime in,
Speaker 5: and it was not. There was no time for me
Speaker 5: to certainly go and sit in on anything but rough cuts.
Speaker 5: And I was only there for so I could get
Speaker 5: barked that when when actors wore sunglasses.
Speaker 7: Sunglasses, we were like, and that's the last time.
Speaker 1: And also remember you wanted Joe to chew gum And
Speaker 1: the word came down from Aaron, no gum.
Speaker 5: I got yelled at. He said, didn't I teach you
Speaker 5: better than that? What the hell is she doing?
Speaker 6: I know?
Speaker 5: And I came back and I totally understand his Uh.
Speaker 6: It look terrible.
Speaker 5: I'm looking.
Speaker 6: Aaron's like hating this, and I'm hating it. So Gum's
Speaker 6: just done.
Speaker 5: The sunglasses thing. I told you he didn't mind if
Speaker 5: somebody was wearing sunglasses across the street or something. But
Speaker 5: Aaron always said this, listen, television is a close up medium.
Speaker 5: And if I have to sit there and watch somebody
Speaker 5: for two pages talking to you know, somebody with sunglasses
Speaker 5: on I don't know what they're thinking, you know, the
Speaker 5: old eyes of the window of the soul. And he knew, Boy,
Speaker 5: he knew what.
Speaker 2: Really true because to this day, like when we were
Speaker 2: doing Fantasy Island in Puerto Rico, and I wanted to
Speaker 2: it's very sunny and very blow very windy, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to wear sunglasses. Any character out on the beach
Speaker 2: would wear them. But if you're by the pool, unless you're.
Speaker 6: Doing this on purpose, they really don't like them. And
Speaker 6: it's for that reason. They want to see what you're looking.
Speaker 5: He had zillions of shows for a reason. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: he always told me. One of the things he taught me.
Speaker 5: I started in the mail room for him years ago,
Speaker 5: did you Yeah, I was a nepo baby because my
Speaker 5: dad was his business man.
Speaker 8: Okay, but.
Speaker 5: He gave you a shot. But if you didn't prove itself,
Speaker 5: I was. I was in the mail room with his
Speaker 5: nephew when he fired his nephew. So you had to
Speaker 5: you had to work hard improve your show. It did.
Speaker 5: But Aaron always said, look, think about how the average
Speaker 5: person watches television. And this is the day before streaming,
Speaker 5: the days before before more than three networks. Even people
Speaker 5: are are doing things. They're house cleaning, they've got the
Speaker 5: TV on. They're not it's not an appointment television. People
Speaker 5: are barely concentrating on a show. So you've got to
Speaker 5: always tell them where you are, don't confuse them, and
Speaker 5: show them good looking, attractive faces who are telling the story,
Speaker 5: because people don't want to see unattractive people. They don't
Speaker 5: want to see uh fancy schmancy directorial things that you're going,
Speaker 5: wait a minute, what's going on here? He says. That's
Speaker 5: why you always have establishing shots. In Aaron's world. You
Speaker 5: know where you are, you're you're you're at shoot you're
Speaker 5: at shooters. So when you cut to some of the
Speaker 5: in shoes, you already know I'm in shooters. I don't
Speaker 5: have to go where are they? Yeah, and he you
Speaker 5: know it. It's different these days, obviously, because we have
Speaker 5: streaming and we sit down and we start, we decide
Speaker 5: when the show starts. In those days, if you weren't
Speaker 5: there at nine o'clock to watch the show, you missed it.
Speaker 5: We had the DVR. So he really knew what he
Speaker 5: was doing, and he came out of that era where
Speaker 5: where a boy he was really successful in doing it.
Speaker 2: I mean that was a real transition too, because when
Speaker 2: you think of Aaron Spelling, you think of the dynasties
Speaker 2: that that the decade or two decades before us. So
Speaker 2: what I really what's so smart about him is that
Speaker 2: he made that change into the younger Melrosee hit it
Speaker 2: off with Darren's That's where it was.
Speaker 5: Darren wrote the pilot nine O two one zero and
Speaker 5: Darren had just done a couple of successful Adie features
Speaker 5: I think before that, and he latched on with Aaron
Speaker 5: and it was a great team because because Darren, you know,
Speaker 5: Aaron had started I mean his first big successful series
Speaker 5: was The Mod Squad. Oh I loved the money, right,
Speaker 5: So Danny Thomas was his partner, and I had a
Speaker 5: poster on my wall and it was about you know,
Speaker 5: who had the sixties counterculture and you had these three
Speaker 5: young kids being cops and so he always kind of
Speaker 5: appealed to that. But he it would helped to have
Speaker 5: Darren and appeal to this whole new generation. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 5: he got. He was a smart guy. He was a
Speaker 5: very smart man.
Speaker 4: And we were also sort of culturally happening at a
Speaker 4: time when things were shifting, because we remember when like
Speaker 4: Chip Hayes, our producer, also liked our dad on set
Speaker 4: got the first cell phone, right, and you would come
Speaker 4: with this giant brink of a cell phone. But you
Speaker 4: were also you know, you were coming to us with
Speaker 4: the numbers and stuff and like you. But it was
Speaker 4: just this transition where this information was being delivered in
Speaker 4: new ways and the Internet and like chat rooms were
Speaker 4: starting to be a thing, and you were starting to
Speaker 4: share that stuff.
Speaker 5: I think Harry Bring was and I were the first
Speaker 5: on AOL. And I mean you just didn't have there
Speaker 5: was no there was no office email in those days.
Speaker 5: Spelling did not have this email fact factes and pagers
Speaker 5: fast the beepers. You know, if I wanted, if Aaron
Speaker 5: wanted to talk to me while I was driving, get
Speaker 5: a beep yes.
Speaker 6: And you'd have to pull over find In the.
Speaker 5: Beginning, I'd had to you know, get to the office
Speaker 5: and call them right away. But later on you had
Speaker 5: the cell phone, the car phone not a cell.
Speaker 7: Phone was yeah, we all got car phones during the place.
Speaker 2: So what are some of your the business side alone,
Speaker 2: but like of us or other actors are just being
Speaker 2: on set.
Speaker 5: I just I remember Melose Place was the happiest time
Speaker 5: of my professional career, without a doubt. You guys made
Speaker 5: it that way. You made that going to work a joy.
Speaker 5: And I always, you know, I was My goal was
Speaker 5: always to get to there at Crew Hall, because you know,
Speaker 5: you had to walk the sets. I was always taught,
Speaker 5: you walk the sets, there's going to be something wrong,
Speaker 5: fixed it before you know the actors get there. And
Speaker 5: it was just I remember talking to Laura. We used
Speaker 5: to bump into each other every morning at the craft
Speaker 5: service because we both were for the box of Lucky Charms.
Speaker 5: We both love lucky charms.
Speaker 1: And wait a fuel your day.
Speaker 5: To this day, I can't go a supermarket cereal isle
Speaker 5: without thinking of Laura. Because there's a song in Sunset
Speaker 5: Boulevard the redoing. There's a song in there about as
Speaker 5: if I never said goodbye, about the early morning madness
Speaker 5: and the magic and the making and the cardboard trees
Speaker 5: and the painted seams, and she's singing about what it's
Speaker 5: like to be on a set, and that's I remember
Speaker 5: that that morning where you've got a lot of work
Speaker 5: ahead of you, but you're working with really good people. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it ended up being the directors that we found. We
Speaker 5: found some really good people, and it made it a
Speaker 5: joy to go to work, and you were working really hard,
Speaker 5: but it was not an unpleasant work. It was fun.
Speaker 4: You say that all the time, but to have you
Speaker 4: come in and say it from where you were sitting
Speaker 4: and well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you guys, that warms my heart because that was
Speaker 5: my goal. I had been on sets where I didn't
Speaker 5: want to go into work because that so and so
Speaker 5: was going to be there and oh no, that's here,
Speaker 5: they're coming in. And it was never that way. We
Speaker 5: just had fun and the writers were so good about
Speaker 5: not changing things at the last minute. You know, you
Speaker 5: wouldn't get tons of pages at the last second. You'd
Speaker 5: have to may you know. I made sure you guys
Speaker 5: had communication with me. I said, if you've got a
Speaker 5: problem in a script, please don't please don't bring it
Speaker 5: up to me on the day of shooting. I'm bringing
Speaker 5: it to you days in advance. Read it and we'll talk.
Speaker 5: Get the writer on the phone in my office and
Speaker 5: we'll fix it. So you're not having problems on the
Speaker 5: set and costing us time. I mean, there's always lines
Speaker 5: that you say, you know, need to say a little
Speaker 5: differently when you're rehearsing them, but we had a good
Speaker 5: system going there. You know, if you needed time off,
Speaker 5: I'd make sure I'd rearrange things for you. I found
Speaker 5: just a beautiful note from marshacross to me. She had
Speaker 5: somebody close to her pass early on in the in
Speaker 5: the shooting, and she came to me and said, I've
Speaker 5: got to do this Shakespeare play down and San Diego
Speaker 5: I think it was. And he took a little bit
Speaker 5: of work, to cost a little money to rearrange the schedule,
Speaker 5: but I knew she really needed it, and she wrought
Speaker 5: the most beautiful note to me afterwards about how much it.
Speaker 1: Meantor yeah, yeah, it was such a different time, you know,
Speaker 1: and I really missed. Some people talk about series, Oh
Speaker 1: it's the same thing every day. I love that family
Speaker 1: that you get to know each other, that you bond
Speaker 1: that I mean, I bought a house, I got dogs,
Speaker 1: and I remember bringing polaroids of my house and my
Speaker 1: dogs to show the crew and to show everybody, like,
Speaker 1: when you're together fourteen to sixteen hours a day and
Speaker 1: you're lucky enough to have a happy cast and crew,
Speaker 1: it's really extraordinary. It is rare, and I think you're right.
Speaker 1: A lot of it with Santa Clarita.
Speaker 5: We were always against traffic, so getting out there was
Speaker 5: easy and coming back home was easy because Trafford was.
Speaker 6: Always going nighttime.
Speaker 1: It was thirty minutes exactly from my door to the
Speaker 1: twenty six miles I remember that, which in La could
Speaker 1: be two hours.
Speaker 5: But because and then it worked out right when we
Speaker 5: started shooting on an auctionar because he just went out
Speaker 5: twenty six straight across Santa Paula and fillmore and that
Speaker 5: you were at the beach. Yeah, Oxnard with yeah, it
Speaker 5: made it. It all worked out. Break then I'm missing Hi.
Speaker 8: I'm Kristin Davis, and I want to know, are you
Speaker 8: a Charlotte. In nineteen ninety seven, my life was forever
Speaker 8: changed when I took on the role of Charlotte York
Speaker 8: on a new HBO show called Sex and the City.
Speaker 8: As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte navigate relationships
Speaker 8: in New York City, the show helped push once unacceptable
Speaker 8: conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative
Speaker 8: around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them
Speaker 8: as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships.
Speaker 8: Now I want to connect with you and share untold
Speaker 8: stories and all the behind the scenes together with special guests.
Speaker 8: What will begin with sex and the City will evolve
Speaker 8: into talks about themes that are still so relevant today.
Speaker 8: Are You a Charlotte is much more than just rewatching
Speaker 8: our loved show. It brings the past and the present
Speaker 8: together as we talk with heart, humor, and of course
Speaker 8: some optimism. Listen to Are You a Charlotte on the
Speaker 8: iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4: You did another nice thing for I think it was
Speaker 4: for Courtney. I heard something about this early on, when
Speaker 4: she was so overwhelmed by working so much like the
Speaker 4: Angenoux who had all the scenes, and you were just
Speaker 4: really tired from working so much in those early episodes.
Speaker 3: I think I remember sometimes.
Speaker 5: Well people don't understand is that not only were we
Speaker 5: working you on set to death, but when you weren't working,
Speaker 5: you were off doing publicity interviews, photo shoots, and I
Speaker 5: can't remember. I think we were at La After or
Speaker 5: something shooting something this one time and you just came
Speaker 5: in and just said, I'm so exhausted, I'm so tired,
Speaker 5: I can't do this today. Can we do something, and
Speaker 5: I'm going on location, and you said just and you
Speaker 5: were very up. You were just exhausted. You look like
Speaker 5: you were going to just drop. And you had you
Speaker 5: had just shown me or talked to me about wanting
Speaker 5: to get a house and a dog. I remember, so
Speaker 5: I I said, tell you what because you were crying.
Speaker 5: He was just really exhausted, and I said, don't worry.
Speaker 5: I rearranged the schedule as best I could so that
Speaker 5: you could decompress a little bit. But then I had Frank. Uh.
Speaker 5: It was Frank, our prop master, and I said, Frank,
Speaker 5: I said go to you know, because prop department is
Speaker 5: in charge of animals. I said, go rent me a.
Speaker 6: Puppy appy for the day.
Speaker 7: I vaguely, vaguely remember.
Speaker 5: I remember it more. I knocked on your door and
Speaker 5: I said, this is not a gift, this is a loan.
Speaker 5: Whatever it was, I think it worked. I think you
Speaker 5: you were so enamored with playing with the puppy that
Speaker 5: you forgot that you were horrible.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's very creative.
Speaker 5: It was great. When we've got the day's work done.
Speaker 7: She was out there like her life and normally that's
Speaker 7: something you do for toddlers. Apparently I was a very
Speaker 7: four years.
Speaker 5: Towards the end of that first season we had you
Speaker 5: and and Andrew. I guess could just roll with the bunches.
Speaker 5: Of course he always came in going what are we
Speaker 5: doing today?
Speaker 1: You didn't learn your But also he didn't do as
Speaker 1: much like I was in the scenes with him, and
Speaker 1: then I was the bridge for other scenes.
Speaker 5: That you were like crying, having to cry in every.
Speaker 1: Other Yes, it was very sad a lot because if
Speaker 1: the tumor and whatnot.
Speaker 5: Put you through the emotional wringer a lot of the time.
Speaker 5: So I remember that day very well, bring her a puppy,
Speaker 5: She's gonna be a puppy. And he was there within
Speaker 5: a half hour.
Speaker 6: Very you knew that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you really have to be creative problem solver on
Speaker 2: shows like this that go so fast, because you never
Speaker 2: know what it's going to be with all the It
Speaker 2: could be the cast, could be the crew.
Speaker 5: Or it could be the riders. Remember we were blowing
Speaker 5: up a boat on Lake Piru. We had built that
Speaker 5: boat that Kaffee Ireland and Uh and Jake and we
Speaker 5: built like a We bought a sailboat and made it
Speaker 5: look like that that yacht that you guys were on
Speaker 5: by like a fifty scale model and we put it
Speaker 5: on Lake Piru and our John Gray, our special effects guy,
Speaker 5: had rigged it with all these great explosions and gasoline
Speaker 5: and we're all laying up there and we're and we
Speaker 5: go and three two one, and he pushes the button
Speaker 5: in nothing. Oh my god, and my heart goes into
Speaker 5: my stomach, going, what are we going to do now?
Speaker 5: There's been an electrical charge that has been sent through
Speaker 5: And he says, give me a minute, and I'm going on, John,
Speaker 5: I got Harry Brain was the production manity, and I said, guys,
Speaker 5: we got to have another safety meeting here because this
Speaker 5: is not this is getting me very concerned. That John
Speaker 5: said I can fix it. And John Gray had to
Speaker 5: go crawl over all these explosives and bladders of gasoline.
Speaker 5: And I'm sitting there just going, I'm envisioning myself on
Speaker 5: the stand at a.
Speaker 9: Trial with the headlines with the headlines of and I'm going, oh,
Speaker 9: and that that was an example of oh, this pleasant
Speaker 9: night where we're going to have fun with fireworks and
Speaker 9: blow up a boat and turning it.
Speaker 5: Into ohmos, don't die, please, don't die. And he had
Speaker 5: to go crawl over that, and he found that that
Speaker 5: one of the wires had pulled out and reconnected Jesus
Speaker 5: and came out. He got it, got it bus and
Speaker 5: then we blew that it was I still see that
Speaker 5: explosion in stock footage to this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, multiple cameras all the time, work four cameras, I think.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then we would cut the in and it
Speaker 5: looks like it blows up eighteen times.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was great. It was a great sign. It
Speaker 5: was But that was one of the nights where you
Speaker 5: just so this was not expected.
Speaker 1: So when the apartment blew up, it wasn't an airplane, right, No, it.
Speaker 5: Wasn't an airplane. It was marsh across Kimberly Place.
Speaker 7: I got a picture ship photographs.
Speaker 4: He's the only one who has these wonderful photographs explosion.
Speaker 5: Kimberly had wired the building with explosives. Oh and this
Speaker 5: was another here's something I expected. We had shot this,
Speaker 5: you know, we built the entire half of the building
Speaker 5: out in the parking lot, and we had done some
Speaker 5: small explosions on stage, you know, with windows blowing out,
Speaker 5: and we had air cannons blowing heather or off the
Speaker 5: balcony or something, and and we didn't. And then we
Speaker 5: went outside and we blew it up and burned it down,
Speaker 5: and it was all. It was great stuff, and it
Speaker 5: cut together great, and we had the rough cut with
Speaker 5: air and it was wonderful. And I'm on an air
Speaker 5: I'm getting in the airport on my way to vacation
Speaker 5: during hiatus of this was the third seat end of
Speaker 5: the third season, before or the fourth, and I look
Speaker 5: up and CNN's got this whole thing on the Murror
Speaker 5: building in the Ooklahoma City just blew up. And I go, oh,
Speaker 5: first of all, the tragedy of what happened, but then
Speaker 5: I went, oh, my god, we're supposed to air this
Speaker 5: episode in about three weeks where she blows up a building,
Speaker 5: and boy, the phone calls started flying between us, and
Speaker 5: I'm going, I'm going to have to suddenly call everybody
Speaker 5: back and reshoot a different show. And we ended up
Speaker 5: instead of blowing it up, then we froze the end
Speaker 5: of the third season on her pushing the button, and
Speaker 5: then froze it more. It didn't the explosion didn't happen
Speaker 5: till the beginning of the fourth give every month later,
Speaker 5: three or four months of you know, decompressing out of
Speaker 5: that tragedy before we did this. So it's amazing some
Speaker 5: of the things that fate throws your way doing.
Speaker 3: This and the adjustments you were able to make and
Speaker 3: still have an amazing.
Speaker 7: Did you go in your vacation?
Speaker 5: I did with the phone's.
Speaker 4: Phones ringing off the So you've talked about a couple
Speaker 4: of these like stunt scenes and explosions and everything.
Speaker 3: If you were to say like three to five of
Speaker 3: your like.
Speaker 4: Quintessential Melrose like moments or like things that you're so
Speaker 4: or proud that we were able to achieve, But what
Speaker 4: would they be?
Speaker 5: Though? That sequence was pretty difficult. Yeah, we appreciated a
Speaker 5: lot of had to do days of shooting on that,
Speaker 5: but I mean, I mean we ran a train into
Speaker 5: a car. I can't remember on what it was, but
Speaker 5: we went to fillmore I think, and then and had
Speaker 5: a train coming by it sixty miles an hour plowing
Speaker 5: into a car we had right outside. We built a
Speaker 5: whole propane tank for Again I can't remember the episodes,
Speaker 5: but this we did a great car car chase that
Speaker 5: ended there and it slid into the propane tank and
Speaker 5: that I can't remember who was in it. Well, some
Speaker 5: of the bad guys we killed up started going the
Speaker 5: arm of the of the hose. It was spraying, proprating
Speaker 5: out and you know, and then suddenly a spark and
Speaker 5: the whole thing blows up. And I mean we did
Speaker 5: a lot of that.
Speaker 6: Will let us know who that was. But was it Billy?
Speaker 5: I think it may have been into the brothers.
Speaker 6: Johnny knows they've played their brothers.
Speaker 7: That's right.
Speaker 5: Who was the guy that played the crazy guy on
Speaker 5: the boat with you? I was James Wilder, James Wilder, James.
Speaker 5: That was the time and the thing. There's another thing
Speaker 5: I remember was getting Grant, not in your sequence, I think,
Speaker 5: but the kaffiy Ireland sequence. We were out shooting night
Speaker 5: work on the Pacific Ocean. This is I mean, there's
Speaker 5: nothing more difficult than than boat work, because you've got
Speaker 5: a picture boat where you're you're photographing, you've got a
Speaker 5: camera boat, you've got a lighting boat, you've got a
Speaker 5: support boat, and everything has to line up. And so
Speaker 5: you line it up, you get a shot, and then
Speaker 5: everything's floated.
Speaker 6: Off and then they have to act night and I.
Speaker 5: Remember Charlie Carroll was there and usually you're going you know,
Speaker 5: hurry up, everybody. We're losing the light. You know, we're
Speaker 5: losing the light. No, we're losing the night. Don as
Speaker 5: Dona is coming. And we walked this night stuff and
Speaker 5: we got Grant in the Pacific Ocean falling overboard and
Speaker 5: he said, no, let me do I was gonna have
Speaker 5: a stunt. Guy, let me do it. And he was
Speaker 5: in the ocean at night in the way.
Speaker 1: God, I can't believe you did the actual ocean And
Speaker 1: where is it?
Speaker 7: Paramount has the back with the water.
Speaker 5: That's that's only if you're standing still and if you're
Speaker 5: not going to if you want to boat traveling. And
Speaker 5: we we had you know, James Wilder, there was a
Speaker 5: shotgun evolved.
Speaker 6: It was a huge shot season.
Speaker 5: Is that I can't remember.
Speaker 6: It was three three It was our big season, so
Speaker 6: much ahead of us to stop. Now, I know that
Speaker 6: you were.
Speaker 5: Everybody was really game. We got you in the water
Speaker 5: a few times the lake.
Speaker 7: Stay of One, that's what it was hailing. And I
Speaker 7: was crying. It was hailing. I was crying.
Speaker 6: There were no puppies and.
Speaker 1: I don't remember who was directing it, but I remember
Speaker 1: they said okay, and I'm like it is helling Courtney,
Speaker 1: can you splash your hands so we don't notice the hail.
Speaker 6: So like, oh my god, and then the ship comes
Speaker 6: and goes.
Speaker 2: Hey, guys were picked up for another years.
Speaker 1: And Loan is crying because I'm crying. So she's trying
Speaker 1: to touch me up and she's crying.
Speaker 7: I'm crying.
Speaker 5: We had the best crew and Loan and hairdressers was
Speaker 5: who was our hairdresser?
Speaker 3: We had Ril for a while.
Speaker 6: We had Yeah, I can see her yes.
Speaker 3: Every now and then my memory.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But they were such a great they were. They were
Speaker 5: so good to you guys. And and when they did
Speaker 5: when they were asked to do something special like Kimberly's
Speaker 5: vault the scar Boy, they knocked it out of a park.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, alone is amazing. She could do anything. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So here's what I'm finding.
Speaker 4: I'm finding that Chip has more memories and more stories
Speaker 4: than we we need more than one episode. So I
Speaker 4: think we may be having Chipped back because there's so
Speaker 4: much to talk about. But we did have a lot
Speaker 4: of fans send in some questions that they were interested in.
Speaker 4: So maybe we'll try like a lightning round and.
Speaker 7: We'll get some fan question.
Speaker 4: Great, can you tell us some casting possibilities that were
Speaker 4: never realized.
Speaker 5: I partly got into the casting. They just showed up,
Speaker 5: going Hi, I'm here for wardrobe.
Speaker 1: So did you come that day when Andrew was cast?
Speaker 1: Were you there at Aeron's that day?
Speaker 5: Not that day? No, because we were shooting the pilot
Speaker 5: if you remember.
Speaker 7: That happened on Saturday.
Speaker 5: I know, but I had to I had to reorder
Speaker 5: the whole board because we had to push all of
Speaker 5: Billy scenes to the end of that Shoe Deutsch, because
Speaker 5: Howie Deutsch had come to me and said, I said
Speaker 5: that one scene where where Billie's lifting the toilet seed up,
Speaker 5: uh plot and he shot it like twenty times, Howie,
Speaker 5: and he came to me and he said, you know,
Speaker 5: this guy doesn't seem to be you know, getting it.
Speaker 5: And I got on the phone to Duke Vincent and said, Duke, uh,
Speaker 5: I'm going to rush dailies over to you tomorrow and
Speaker 5: take a look. And the next thing I know, you know, so.
Speaker 7: I later he was great, he's not the.
Speaker 5: Envisioned Yeah, so that's going to be a different question,
Speaker 5: because you know, I got handed the cast.
Speaker 3: So you weren't always you weren't in regularly.
Speaker 5: That was all the way in West La and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: All right, more questions. What was the hardest part of
Speaker 4: I think you've sort of answered it. What was the
Speaker 4: hardest lot of time naturally filming two episodes at the
Speaker 4: same time. Did you ever did we ever have any
Speaker 4: like major snaffoos that's like not really.
Speaker 5: I I I ended up because you're dealing with four
Speaker 5: different assistant directors too, prepping to shooting on that. So
Speaker 5: I did all the boards myself. I love puzzles. I'm
Speaker 5: a puzzle guy. So I'd sit down on the floor
Speaker 5: of my office and I knew so I knew where
Speaker 5: all the pitfalls might be, and I was trying. I
Speaker 5: tried to anticipate, you know, what might be a problem
Speaker 5: here on this double up and then oh but I
Speaker 5: tried never to if I moved you from one show
Speaker 5: to another, was because you had to go from stage
Speaker 5: to stage. Rarely did I say Oxlard to Santa Cloria,
Speaker 5: because then you have that unknown of who's going to
Speaker 5: you know, be early and everybody's gonna be tapping their
Speaker 5: toes waiting for Laura to.
Speaker 1: Get here from the It happened sometimes, but rarely, so
Speaker 1: I try to anticipate.
Speaker 2: That was the episode of the bombing of the building,
Speaker 2: which was season four episode one, the most expensive and
Speaker 2: controversial then.
Speaker 5: Probably because we spent days on that, and I had
Speaker 5: to I had to be extra good about my my
Speaker 5: slush fund because the network never gave us breakage and
Speaker 5: stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Would they ever give you more when the numbers start
Speaker 2: to go and season three were doing so great.
Speaker 5: The only time they would give you extra money was
Speaker 5: if you were stunt casting like Priscilla Pressley or Lonnie Anderson,
Speaker 5: something they could get publicity out of. They would give
Speaker 5: you extra cast breakage. But but and you know, when
Speaker 5: Heather came on board, that was a network network, separate
Speaker 5: network money. You know, we didn't. We barely could afford you.
Speaker 5: We had to fire and located to afford you. And
Speaker 5: even then I had to, I had to find some
Speaker 5: other savings to afford you. Chip.
Speaker 2: That's funny you bring that up, because I remember calling
Speaker 2: you because the end of season four, I mean to
Speaker 2: be honest, I was like, I want, I'll talk to
Speaker 2: Darren about this, but my storylines were just so much the.
Speaker 6: Same, and another bad guy, another bad guy, on and
Speaker 6: on and on.
Speaker 2: But I remember calling you because they didn't call me
Speaker 2: back for after that, and I was like, did I
Speaker 2: do something wrong? Or did you hear my therapist office?
Speaker 6: Because I was hating.
Speaker 5: The I was, I was, I was heartbroken. Happen anytime
Speaker 5: you have questions like that, it always comes down to money. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And the network was not It was not generous with
Speaker 5: you know. I mean we had a moderate budget, but
Speaker 5: not a big budget, and they kept the thing is,
Speaker 5: if the writers wanted to bring on two new characters,
Speaker 5: something else was going to have to change, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I remember you said, honey, I think you're
Speaker 2: making more money than anybody said.
Speaker 5: The problem was like, okay, you had a big bump,
Speaker 5: do you if you were to be picked up, your
Speaker 5: your your agent made a too good of a deal.
Speaker 6: What I remember?
Speaker 5: I just remember it's always money because we loved you.
Speaker 5: I loved all of you, and it broke my heart
Speaker 5: every time one of you left the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because after five, a lot of us left, right,
Speaker 1: How did that feel it coming back to six?
Speaker 5: Well, especially with somebody, you know. I remember it was
Speaker 5: at the airport, was your last scene, and it was
Speaker 5: like saying goodbye to you. You were off the gang walking
Speaker 5: down the airway and I was probably near tears. Five
Speaker 5: years of working with really fun neat people like you guys,
Speaker 5: it's hard to say goodbye.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I remember, don't you guys remember the show
Speaker 2: really was changing, I mean the cast, and I think
Speaker 2: it's because the contracts were ending. But season four, at
Speaker 2: the end of four, that was the end of mine.
Speaker 2: But I was there the whole season. I remember like
Speaker 2: new characters coming on and people having less of a storyline,
Speaker 2: and it was they were shifting.
Speaker 5: Well, it gets tough after you do you know two
Speaker 5: hundred hours and Darren had left, and Darren left at
Speaker 5: the end of three I think, so.
Speaker 6: It was really changing.
Speaker 5: And yeah, it was that it's tough to keep any
Speaker 5: show alive.
Speaker 3: Coming up to his stories.
Speaker 5: And you know, you're always at your best in season
Speaker 5: two and three, in any in any series you look at,
Speaker 5: you'll notice that, you know, season one is where you
Speaker 5: got all the kinks out, season two is where you
Speaker 5: really hit it going. Then by season three you really
Speaker 5: fired in all cylinders.
Speaker 6: And then why don't you change it?
Speaker 2: Because their contracts are going to be over and the
Speaker 2: work and Aaron Spelling wants to be ready for to
Speaker 2: keep this.
Speaker 5: Going with bringing new actors with the five year contra,
Speaker 5: and you bring them in in season three or four,
Speaker 5: and if they work, then you've got somebody you know,
Speaker 5: that you can afford and pick up. And and then
Speaker 5: some people we asked, you know, you want to come
Speaker 5: back and try to make that deal, and some of
Speaker 5: you just said, now you know, Like I remember, Grant
Speaker 5: just was like and go was like, ready to get
Speaker 5: out of this. He's done five years and that's enough. Yeah. No.
Speaker 1: I tried to make a deal and I had a
Speaker 1: number in line and they weren't willing to match it,
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, oh yeah, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: It was honestly, I was kind of ready. I thought
Speaker 1: I would stay for this, and I was ready. But
Speaker 1: I remember what they did, which is really smart, is
Speaker 1: once they knew I wasn't coming back, like my character
Speaker 1: faded into the distance. I remember one episode I wasn't in.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh, this will be an easy week,
Speaker 1: Like I wasn't in because they sort of they're they're
Speaker 1: focusing obviously on the new characters that are going to
Speaker 1: be They don't want it to notice when when I
Speaker 1: get on the plane, they're like, we haven't really seen
Speaker 1: her anyway. There she goes on blind that's okay, And again.
Speaker 5: These are I mean, Darren would be able to give
Speaker 5: you the real ins and outs behind that because I wasn't.
Speaker 5: You know, I only heard about it second hand about
Speaker 5: what happened. But it's always money.
Speaker 2: But it's so interesting this conversation because here we are,
Speaker 2: you know, artists.
Speaker 6: This is the nature of this business, is the art
Speaker 6: and the commerce, and you are coming in.
Speaker 2: You have a foot in both. You have to meet
Speaker 2: those needs and make us all happy too, you know.
Speaker 2: But this is what acting in this business is.
Speaker 5: It is and as long as as long as it
Speaker 5: my job was done, as long as you guys said
Speaker 5: I can't wait to get off that set. If anybody
Speaker 5: said that, then I would know I'd failed in my job.
Speaker 5: And that's all I can do. Very happy. The rest
Speaker 5: of it is, you know, between you, your agent, the network,
Speaker 5: and the writers and whether or not a lot of
Speaker 5: times the writers just say, you know, I don't know
Speaker 5: where that character is going anymore. And it was mutual.
Speaker 5: I mean they're saying, you know, we've kind of our
Speaker 5: brains can't come up with new stuff, so we want
Speaker 5: to have fresh.
Speaker 1: That it never happened with Sydney because they just do something crazy, make.
Speaker 5: Us want me to become that cult stuff cult. That
Speaker 5: was the coldest shooting, shooting that cult stuff where we
Speaker 5: were in the mountains. It was in like the middle
Speaker 5: of February, and it was that was that was when
Speaker 5: I started having mister Cappuccino show up every night on
Speaker 5: because it was so freaking cold up there.
Speaker 1: When we had Thomas on, they were talking about like
Speaker 1: a hot string.
Speaker 4: Okay, so she was yes, So the hot the hot
Speaker 4: springs hot space.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the hot Springs place. I love that.
Speaker 4: That's part of what Chip has brought is he's got
Speaker 4: some snapshots, he's.
Speaker 2: Got some receipts that it wasn't like some cleazy, old,
Speaker 2: dirty clarified tell us all about that.
Speaker 5: We were wherever the mountains were there and we found
Speaker 5: the spot. We dug a hole with a bulldozer and
Speaker 5: lined it with blackfist green plastic days before, days before,
Speaker 5: and filled it with water, chlorinated water that had been
Speaker 5: tinted so that you couldn't see the plastic to the one,
Speaker 5: and we heated it for two days. We had portable
Speaker 5: heaters and filters. So when you said it was just awful.
Speaker 5: It was dirty, filthy filters.
Speaker 4: I absolutely corrected, it was not filthy.
Speaker 6: It was Thomas who was bothering Thomas.
Speaker 3: Thomas claims not to remember it at all.
Speaker 5: It was the date on that is, February something ninety
Speaker 5: four and it was cold. So I created this war,
Speaker 5: made a.
Speaker 6: Nice heart that looked out in the nowhere like there
Speaker 6: you go it. Yeah, this is how good you took
Speaker 6: care of us.
Speaker 5: I mean your acts happy.
Speaker 4: I had a shower in the trailer after words, like
Speaker 4: cleaning off and get I was well taken care of.
Speaker 5: You've got to keep it was so good, it was
Speaker 5: like a happy shows.
Speaker 4: Well, we have loved having you, and we give you
Speaker 4: full permission to call us anytime we get something wrong.
Speaker 4: We know that we're going to invoke your name again.
Speaker 5: We're always be a reference. That's I've never even opened
Speaker 5: that count.
Speaker 1: Were you listening when Colleen found the Mellow's place perfume?
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, I heard that.
Speaker 3: The most obscure but thank you so much for bringing.
Speaker 1: Oh we can't even wait when it starts to get diceier.
Speaker 5: We started this experience for me too. I'm watching them
Speaker 5: just as you guys are doing the podcast and so
Speaker 5: I haven't seen this in thirty two years, so they're
Speaker 5: I'm finding all sorts of surprises. I know. Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: really fun and we.
Speaker 4: Hope that our listeners are watching the episodes to watching
Speaker 4: along with us and thank you.
Speaker 2: So we want everyone don't forget to follow us at
Speaker 2: Still the Place on Instagram and Facebook and work are
Speaker 2: you TikTok Still the Place and then to download and
Speaker 2: lead us leave us some reviews on our podcast.
Speaker 4: And thanks so much for coming to our very special
Speaker 4: interview episode with Chip Haye
Speaker 6: Than thanks Chip,